


Claire's Path

by silverxrain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 17:33:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3700955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverxrain/pseuds/silverxrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her father was an angel. Her mother was a demon. What's a girl to do?</p><p>Several years later, Castiel drives off and Claire watches him go. She hasn't told him about the things she's done. </p><p>A scruffy guy her age appears out of nowhere across a street in Omaha. He turns out to be the Antichrist, (well, almost). Now he's just one more kid in a big bad world. Claire thinks they might do better working together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Claire's Path

Claire can't resist a small smile as the ugly yellow car retreats into a tiny speck on the highway. She drops her duffel on the dried up grass and rests her weary legs on an abandoned paint bucket. Kansas really is the middle of nowhere.

Castiel means well, she can tell that much. He seems to be a vastly different creature than the one who walked out of the bloodstained warehouse with her father, leaving her with her trembling mother. The fact that he has started to care _now_ , after _years_ and years of her praying for a miracle that would have been so easy for him to grant, seems like hypocrisy, and it fills her with anger.

But anger has no use, other than to keep you alive, and this time around, Claire has decided she would rather live than survive. It is useless to be angry with Castiel, and she thinks she might be beginning to forgive him even. It will take time, and distance. For so many years she's been living in vain, desperate dry-mouthed hope that her father will come back and everything will be all right. She had even committed an act she regrets, in terrible bitterness and hurt. She's different now.

Now that she knows her father is gone for good, somewhere he'll be happy, she can finally move forward. To where, she isn't sure. It doesn't matter. Claire's been taking care of number one since her the thing which was not her mother slapped her at twelve years old. She'll manage the big bad world easily now she's seventeen.

Claire looks up and down the empty road, and waits.

 

-

She checks her watch. It's been half an hour, and a battered white Toyota truck is slowing down. Tight packed dirt grates under the soles of her boots as she shifts on her feet in anticipation. A dry breeze gently brushes her hair from her face.

She peers into the window of the approaching car. It's slowing down, and Claire can see that it's a woman. That is something of a relief. She drops her hand, as the car rattles to a stop in front of her. It's not in great shape, deep scratches are running along the side of the car, (Claire wonders what the hell could've made those), and the door is ajar, as if it's been torn off and delicately placed back on its hinges.

The woman fixes Claire with her gaze. She looks young, with a dark ponytail, navy t-shirt and a baseball cap on.

The woman rolls down the window with a scraping sound that makes Claire wince. "Need a ride?" she calls.

Claire nods and shoulders her duffel. She doesn't have a destination, so she can get off at any time. She just needs to get out of Kansas.

She opens the door, slides inside and carefully shuts it behind her. The lady gives her a friendly smile and starts the car.

When Lebanon is in the rear view mirror, Claire slumps, as if all at once, something has been drained from her. Years of hatred and defiance and furious hope, she is leaving behind. She thinks it may be a brighter future.

 

-

Three weeks later find her in Omaha, the only place in all Nebraska that isn't fucking cornfields.

Claire's kicking a soda can around outside a newsagents. Little kids are chasing a football in front of the row of crumbling houses. Chewing gum litters the pavement. This is one of the more rundown neighbourhoods of the city, naturally. Claire can feel the dirt under her nails, the car exhaust in her lungs. It's where she fits in best.

There's a library across the street, and Claire's going to head in there to see if she can wait out the rest of the evening there. She doesn't know where she'll spend the night, having only just enough money for food. It'll have to be a surprise, then.

Claire's planning to follow a bunch of teenagers into the newsagents to see if she can slip something under jacket in the crowd when something catches her eye.

There's a blurry patch on the pavement, and a kid's appeared from nowhere.

Claire's seen teleportation too many times not to think _angel_ , immediately followed by _demon_. She's got a small semi-automatic tucked in her inside jacket pocket, but she knows from experience guns are no good against pretty much any supernatural creature.

It's times like these she regrets not getting in with the hunters' scene.

The kid, or creature or whatever it is doesn't seem to be looking for her, which is a relief. Maybe it's not even here for her. It might be taking a day off doing whatever angels and demons did on a regular basis that wasn't with the goal of ruining ordinary people's lives.

All the same, her curiosity is peaked. The kid wrings his hands for a minute, before pushing open the doors to the library and slipping inside. Claire crosses the street and follows the kid in.

She wanders around until she finds him in the computer section. He's logged in - regular user. Claire frowns. So he teleports even though he's from around here?

She watches him for a while, trying to get a look at what he's searching for online. They seem to be mostly news articles, which peaks her interest. Normal teenagers don't go into the library to read news items on strange deaths when it clearly isn't for homework.

Claire decides to take a chance. She strides up to him, lean against the desk his computer's on, and says in her best confident badass voice, "So what are you, anyway?"

The boy freezes. If she ever doubted her own eyes about him appearing from nowhere, now she's certain he did. He looks stricken, caught.

"Who are you, and how did you find me?" he asks, in a low voice. He shares the Midwestern accent that the locals have, reinforcing the idea that he's from here. But if he's on home turf, why does he look like he's been on the run?

Tattered jeans and a hoodie, dirty sneakers falling apart, dark hair falling into his eyes like he hasn't cut it in three months, he looks worse than Claire does. And she can tell by his eyes. He's seen the same things she has. 

"Dude, I saw you appear out of nowhere," Claire says, stepping back and holding her hands up to seem unthreatening. She doesn't know how dangerous he is, after all.

"And you followed me? That's not what a normal person would do," he says, eyes flicking to the slight bulge in her jacket and back to her face. She knows she looks tired, there were dark circles under her eyes when she checked in the public bathroom mirror this morning. They've been getting worse and worse. She really needs a shower, too. It's been months since she ran out of money for motels.

"I'm not a normal person." She figures it might be better to tell him the truth and see how much he knows. "My father is the vessel of an angel. A demon possessed my mother when I was a kid. She lost her mind, left me on my own. But I know about the things, the monsters people hunt."

The kid looks more scared now, if anything. "Are you one of them?"

"A monster? No, I'm human. Vessel for an angel, yeah, but human."

"No, I meant: are you a hunter?" He looks ready to bolt, eyeing the door, sneakers scuffing the floor.

"No, I'm not. Hunters are monsters too," she says, because in her eyes, that's true. He stops leaning towards the door. That was the right answer.

"So what are you?" she asks him. Agreed, this is not a normal conversation between a couple of teenagers in a library, but Claire has accepted her life's only going to get weirder as she grows older.

"I'm-" he hesitates.

"You can trust me," she says, even though he has no way of knowing he can.

"I don't know if you would know what it is I am. I'm called a - a cambion."

"Sounds like a kind of salad."

"I was supposed to be the Antichrist," he says, and winces at the look on her face.

" _What_?"

"Um, that's what they called me." He looks at his shoes.

"Who?"

"The men who came. Right before I met my birth mother for the first time. And she was possessed by a demon. Who apparently was my father. The other guy in the trench coat said I was the Antichrist."

" _What_?"

"I didn't really believe him at first either, but then-"

"What guy in a trench coat?" Claire interrupts. There's only one trench coated man who shows up where there's trouble. That she knows of, at least. The other angels all wore suits.

"Um, he tried to kill me."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because I was the Antichrist."

"Right." Claire shifts on her feet. This probably wasn't the best place for this conversation.

"Do you live near here?" she asks. He looks frightened again.

"I'm not going to try and kill you," she sighs. "I'm not a hunter." _Not of your kind, anyway_. She shoves the thought away. It's been years. Those actions have no consequences, besides her guilt.

"Why do you want to know me, then?" the kid asks defensively. "Most people who find out about this crap, they just want to stay normal."

"I figure we could help each other out," Claire says. "It's a tough world out there, isn't it? Allies are always good. And so far, I've got none."

The kid takes his time thinking it over. Then he logs out of the computer and stands up. "I have an apartment near here. It's not pretty, but we'll have privacy."

"Sounds good." She tries not to hope for too much. She's wanted an ally in the world for so long, which was why she'd went along with Randy so easily. But she knows in her heart that she never should have trusted him with everything. But here is someone her own age, and probably not a danger to her. He needs a friend as much as she does. And someone to tell him wearing tracksuit pants with Nike trainers makes you look like an idiot.

Claire flicks cornrows away from her eyes. They're turning into dreadlocks through no effort on her part. She's a mess. The kid has dirt crusted on his sneakers. So is he. It might be fun to be messes together.

He leaves, and Claire goes with him.


End file.
